If people are watching the anime, this week’s reading covers up to the seven-and-a-half minute mark of the second episode. The remainder of the chapter runs to just after the fourteen minute mark.
Hello, this is my first bookclub and I think I follow it well, not understanding everything but I get the overall beats of the story.
I am curious to know how you read each week?
I read through the chapter over the course of the week, to understand the general story, then go back and look up words that appear a lot or I think are important to the sentence. So far I haven’t really looked into much grammar outside of what i already know, but try to get more familiar with cassual sentence enders
I read through the chapter with Jisho open to look up words as I go along. If I look up a word and see that Wanikani already covered it, I go in Wani and unburn it for a refresher.
For grammar, I can follow most of it, but ~once or twice a chapter there will be a lengthy/complicated sentence that I’ll fully diagram to make sure I understand the grammar points.
For grammar help I like Tofugu or Bunpro. This reading does seem to have a lot of regional/slang-y sentence enders though.
Kinda related but if anyone is looking to improve at grammar overall, I really liked Japanese the Manga Way!
I try to read daily, which means I am a bit ahead of the book club. I tend to read during lulls while working, so I usually read on my tablet and check the meaning of words on my phone if I am not understanding a sentence. As well, I don’t tend to look up most grammar but focus on meaning. If I am reading a physical book, I write the meaning beside the word, but I don’t have the habit of writing the meaning down for digital content, unfortunately.
Ideally, when I have time (and motivation) I like to read current week’s chapter during the week (with vocab, and maybe do some anki cards), and then next week before next week’s chapter I reread the previous one. Usually I catch more this way.
It’s handy to have a frequency vocab list, but sadly we don’t have one for this manga. 放任主義 is worth remembering though. And I think I remembered 容赦なく from this manga exactly
Hah, I was thinking that too. I guess when you’ve got a power that’s activated by dramatically opening your hand, there’s really only so many ways you can do it.
To be fair manga grammar still throws me off a lot. Taking as example Dera’s sentence:
早く下山させてくれないと!
After breaking it down (with ChatGPT, I have to admit) it goes full circle and I can get it, but at first glance… It’s really hard. It’s grammar I already studied, but used for real so it makes me frustrated, I guess?
P. S. : I know that AI may not be the best way, I should be more patient and try alone "^^
Honest answer, when I was reading through I probably thought, Oh, he’s saying something like “We have to hurry down the mountain,” based on context, 早く, 下山, and てくれ including others in the verb (to do something for the speaker).
If I wanted to dig down more, I could look at させてくれ in Jisho and see that it’s a conjugation of する, making the verb 下山する “to descend a mountain.” I didn’t really think about the ending but when I googled what Belthazar said, the first result was ないと (JLPT N4) | Bunpro “must, have to.”
So basically my initial read was pretty correct without knowing all of the details, but I learned more by drilling down into the sentence structure
Some stuff that helps me when I’m confused (that I should remember to do more) is to look at who is speaking to who, or about who, since it’s not always clear when pronouns are omitted (and auto translations are usually not helpful because they don’t have the context).
@Belthazar see, I knew all the grammar structures standalone, just could not put everything together. Class is so much grammar without many applications besides the standard sentences and excercises of the manual. When it comes to “real” Japanese… I am sure that I have everything in my mind, I am in that step where all the points need to converge and make sense.
